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Anti-bandit Glass for Display Cases
One element in providing appropriate security for displayed objects is the use of anti-bandit glass in the construction of the display case. BS 5544 provided a single standard for this until 2000 when it was replaced by the more comprehensive European standard EN 356 with eight different levels of attack resistance. Since higher specification laminated glass can be very expensive care needs to be taken to specify the appropriate attack resistance level for the objects to be displayed.
Below is a simplified version of EN 356 but, for comparison, BS 5544 involved dropping a steel ball that weighs 2.26 kgs onto ten glass samples. Nine samples were each subject to five drops from 3 metres (8 must pass) and one sample subject to a single drop from 9 metres (must pass). A failure is when the ball passes completely through the glass sample.
The first five levels of EN 356 (A) are a ball drop test whilst the other more demanding three levels (B) are an axe-hammer attack. The ball drop uses a steel ball that weights 4.11 kgs (much heavier than BS 5544) and the axe-hammer attack uses a 2 kg head on a 900 mm long handle.
| Class | Drop Height (mm) | Total Strikes | |
| P1A | 1500 | 3 in a triangle | |
| P2A | 3000 | 3 in a triangle | About the same as BS 5544 |
| P3A | 6000 | 3 in a triangle | Much more severe than BS 5544 |
| P4A | 9000 | 3 in a triangle | |
| P5A | 9000 | 3 x 3 in a triangle (9 drops) |
|
| P6B | 30 - 50 | ||
| P7B | 51 - 70 | ||
| P8B | over 70 |
We hope that this simplified guide is helpful but more complete details of the specifications and test procedure can be obtained directly from EN 356.